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by Emilys_List



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Birthday, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilys_List/pseuds/Emilys_List
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two birthdays and a scare, or, several peeks into the life of Elizabeth Jennings (2013, 1965, 1982).</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomizer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomizer/gifts).



> THIS WAS SO FUN. Randomizer, I hope you enjoy it!

2013

It's a minimum security facility. The first years of her imprisonment were spent in maximum security, but when it was clear that the fire of the fight had been extinguished in her, her privileges grew; so did her mobility. 

She's 73 today. She has lived in America for over fifty years, almost her whole life in the embrace of all that she hated, that disgusted her, which has softened into dislike now in the fall of her life. 

Paige visits and brings a solitary cupcake, chocolate with pink frosting and a smattering of sprinkles. "I wanted to light a candle, but," she says, trailing off. She tries a brave smile, wrinkles lining her face, and it's always something that makes her gut rip in half - how many brave smiles her daughter has given her. No child should have to be so noble. She reaches out to touch Paige, to pat her hand, and that smile slides to warm. "Happy Birthday, Mom."

+

1965

It's a small apartment in Alexandria, and not in the good part. Her partner tries his hand at cooking - "It's your birthday, Elizabeth!" He exclaims, jovial - and they have oily, delicious Chinese takeout for dinner once he's got the attempt at cooking out of his system. They sit at their dining table, basically a card table, and eat. She's been practicing her English for years, but on this day she yearns to speak Russian, her heart yearning for her mother who always made her birthday so special.

He yanks at her ear, pulling her out of the mist. One for every year of her life, like her cousins would to tease her, but he does it playfully and sweetly, looking at her like he's in love or like he wishes he was. He does that sometimes; it is extremely off-putting. When he's done, he kisses her, and pulls abruptly back, almost before she can register what happened, though she can still feel the momentary sting of his lips' press. "I'm sorry, sorry," he says, pushing his chair back from the table, his hands on his thighs. "Sorry, Elizabeth." He uses her name a lot, as if to practice, as if by rote it will become real.

She doesn't know what to say, or how to explain that a man's touch feels like a bullet, or although they are supposed to be happily married she can't bridge that divide that says 'we are colleagues.' She crosses her arms. "We can't do Russian things anymore, we need to put them away." Her eyes fall to her lap, to the edge of the tablecloth. "It's - painful, but it's more than a necessity." She's in charge of this mission and she never forgets that. But, on the other hand. "One last thing, though." She pulls a pie from the refrigerator, the one she'd made earlier today and carved "Happy Birthday" into its top crust. A bit of old and new traditions. She presents it in her hands and he looks at it like it's magic. He smiles at her and teases, "But I thought we needed to put that away." 

She sets it on the table, looking at her carvings. She should throw it away, she should have never made it, but it already exists and within its crusty confines it holds so much fresh fruit and sugar. Luxuries. In Russia such a pie would be much more scant, and here, people throw pies in each other's faces for comedy. She can't let it go to waste, as ill-advised as it might have been to bring it into being, and she cuts two huge slices for them. He takes his first bite and closes his eyes, his lips still around fork. "This is delicious, Elizabeth." She takes a small bite of her slice. It's both too sweet and a bit sour from the fruit, but it is somehow good anyway, because it's her birthday and she made it herself. It's her only connection to home right now, besides the man at her side, and that makes it delicious. 

She savors her slice until he breaks their quiet, reminding her, "We've got that meeting." He says it apologetically, like he's sorry that work is interfering with her birthday or her pie. She's reminded again that he's unlike most men she's ever met. He's soft, too kind. He smiles too much. And yet, he's smart and a good partner. They'll be able to make their country proud. 

+

1982

In her life, she's had many hard days, which she's always conceptualized as: ‘I'm a woman. It is we who have the hard days.’ Unexpectedly, this is easily the hardest, with Philip on the edge of death. 

They are in constant danger nowadays. They are enemies in the United States; their mother nation no longer trusts them. But still, this is simply... unimaginable. Unbearable. She sits at his side, at Philip's side, at her husband's side. She grasps at his hand which stays in limp in hers and she grips it, clutches it, draws it to her lips. She kisses his palm. She won't cry. 

From somewhere inside of her, in a voice she barely recognizes - sad and fearful - she says aloud, "I prayed that we'd be sent back. I wanted to do well and succeed in our assignment, but I was so homesick. And you were as unfamiliar as America." She thinks of that time, card tables as dining tables and awkward intimacy. The last birthday pie she'd ever made herself. "I prayed that I wouldn't have to stay married to you, not because you were a brute - I could've handled a brute - but because you seemed to forget we were working." She shakes her head, but it's almost fond. "Or, you wanted to work but you also wanted to - pretend. Like we were... what we said we were. I hoped I'd miscarry," she says, and it's now that tears prick at her eyes, to have been so callous and stupid and young, without any foresight. "And then I hoped again. And I - couldn't feel worse about that, I'll never shake that feeling that I would’ve doubted our amazing children in advance." Her voice is thick with tears, the regret of her stubbornness and prejudice. "I didn't know. You have to believe me, I didn't know that... this arranged marriage could be so good." You are my partner, she thinks, looking at his strong hands. She thinks, You are my friend, and she takes in his dark curly hair. She strokes his curls, something she never takes time to do. She looks at him now, really looking at him, in love.

She struggles to breathe, coughing and gagging from the dryness in her throat. The light goes bright white, painful in her eyes, and she's laying down on a makeshift bed in the worst physical pain she's ever felt. It's her. She's the one who was shot, not him. She has a certain kind of relief that it was her, because if he was gone, she wouldn't know what to do. Her pain is steady, but her heart is still in the throes of her earlier hallucination and how it made her feel. 

"Come home," she says in Russian.

+

After

They live to fight another day, but the next ten years are spent wearily looking over their shoulders. Suspicious. They move often enough to evade suspicion from neighbors, but not often enough that they look flighty. Paige and Henry are enrolled in a prestigious private school, enrollment they keep up even as they move around; private schools ask less questions. 

It all falls apart after Glasnost spreads. Drops start going wrong, confusion reigns, and the CIA artfully takes advantage of that, setting them up during what's a usual meeting in one of their warehouse spaces. She puts her hands up as requested, the command screamed with a primal rip, so happy were they to nab some commies. She doesn't get to look at Philip, she regrets that later, for the rest of her life. She regrets it now, even though her husband is a traitor to their country. Russia, not the United States. He rolled over. He said they were trying to defect. She would never, no matter how welcoming the American bosom had been.

She is serving a life sentence with the option of parole, but she's not sure she even wants it. To be free in America, or in Russia that matter, hardly matters. Her mission failed. She failed. She carries that everyday.

After Paige visits, Philip comes through the door. He's still a slim man, though with less hair, and what's left is gray. His face is lined with wrinkles from smiling, from a long life. He wears a sports coat and turtleneck, and jeans that are pressed. She wonders who did that for him. 

She rises to greet him. They are permitted brief contact and she hugs him, relishing the feel of his body in her arms, his frame still slight and bony, muscles and sinew. She sits and waits for him to follow suit. 

He's brought her a book for her birthday. The cover is slick but made of paper. "It's called Fifty Shades of Gray," he says, pointing at the title. "I can read," she grouses in Russian. At least she's free to speak her mother tongue. At least there's that.

"It's about sex, or something," he says, and she tries to look scandalized. "There are two more. If you like this one, I'll buy you the rest." Philip still works a few days a week at the travel agency, even though so much of that work has dried up because of the Internet, whatever that means. He's still astute. He likes the work now that it's not a front. He likes connecting people to an escape.

"Do you have a girlfriend yet?" She asks. Like she always does. 

He nods too much. "Oh, yeah, I do. She's a real knockout. Sophia Loren's younger sister. We're living together and everything." He gives her a look like, do we really have to do this every time? It's tradition. What else do they have besides banter? They have no life together, and what there is of it is pathetic.

It hurts to ask, but she always does. "How is Henry?" Philip just shakes his head, which means he's still not in touch. Once she was arrested and taken into custody, and with the trial that followed, he simply refused to see them, refused Paige too for being around them. It broke her heart but she hates to think of it. But she still has to ask, even if it's bad news, the same bad news. Maybe one day it will be different.

"Your lawyer says parole is possible. Soon. Did she tell you that?" She nods. "You'd have to show remorse. That your children are Americans, that you have become one too under strange circumstances. And that you miss us and want to come home."

In Russian she says, "Only some of that is true," and he sighs with exasperation. He rolls his shoulders. He says, "You're not sorry. You'll never apologize. But if you show remorse, you'll get to spend time with your grandchildren. You'll get to sleep next to me again." 

She can't understand, she never has, how things are so simple to him. Of course she wants a life with her family. Her work is over. They are all she has. But she has always been a fiercely loyal person, Russia first and everything else second, third, fourth. That is not so easy to let go of. "You snore," she says. 

He gives her a hint of a smile and leans forward. "The list I just gave you, of what you'd need to say. Enough of it is true, isn't it? And the weight of what's true, doesn't it outweigh what's not? It's worth it." 

She is stubborn in every facet of her life, but she's a military officer. She knows a compelling argument when she hears it. Even so, she doesn't want to give too much of her heart to the idea. If it even works, she can't know whether she’ll be allowed to stay in the country. She's known of some agents who've been traded between the countries, Russians for Americans and vice-versa, though she doesn't know if Russia would even trade for her, if they even want her. There's too much unknown, enough to crush her anticipation and hope, because she can't imagine what will happen and she doesn't want to give space inside of her to anything good or hopeful. It might not happen. It probably won't.

He's known her too long and he can read her face, or sense what she's feeling. He shakes his head. "The United States imprisons more people than any nation, including Russia. The prisons are full. They would be happy to cut a woman in her seventies free, even if she is ex-KGB."

She doesn't want to talk about this anymore, so she doesn't answer him or comment in any way. "Why did you buy me a book about sex? I'm a grandmother." 

He’s too old a man to be smirking, but there he goes anyway, incorrigible. “You’re gonna get out soon, hopefully, and I want you primed.”

She shakes her head, displeased with his use of the word ‘primed’ and the fact that he’s clinging to the hope that she will be released. A fool’s errand. “I’m too old.”

He shrugs. “Listen, Elizabeth, it’s 2013. If octogenarians are still knockin’ boots, then I think that-” He’s silenced after she puts a hand over his mouth and he grins into her palm.

This is what she has: a cell with a roommate. A husband who only legally became her spouse after she was arrested. Two lovely children, one who would rather do anything else on the planet than speak to his parents. And she has Fifty Shades of Gray, an addition to her personal library collection. 

She also has the future, and its possibilities are endless if only she’ll let them be open-ended.

Their visit is always too brief. She hugs him again so tightly as he leaves, and he squeezes her back. Her partner. Her Philip. Her husband. Her family. No matter what may come, she has these things, and these things could keep her going until her heart gives out.


End file.
